Great Taste Dumplings

A $1 order of Great Taste Dumplings (Credit: courtesy Open City Mag/Sylvia Kwon)

Great Taste Dumpling is an amazingly cheap, amazingly good dumpling spot in Brooklyn’s Chinatown. It’s a restaurant whose praises have been sung in the press, and that often has lines of customers stretching out onto the street from different parts of the city–people actually bother to travel there, drawn by scores of positive Yelp reviews and FourSquare check ins.

But until a reporter called to write about his restaurant for Open City Mag, Great Taste’s owner, Mr. Chen, had never even seen his store mentioned online:

He did not seem to understand why I wanted to interview him for Open City. Mr. Chen seemed puzzled, and kept asking me to clarify. Finally, he said: ”Can you just tell me–why my business? We are such a small business, not a big deal.”

“But you’re one of the most well-known places in New York for dumplings,” I said.

There was a brief silence on the other line, then an incredulous laugh, or a choking sound not unlike a hoarse sob.

“I had no idea,” he almost lamented.

“You don’t know about your reputation online? I asked.

“How can I? I don’t have time to look at the computer. I get home so late, and I wake up so early, I barely have time to sleep. I only sleep five to six hours a day.”

He sells five dumplings for a dollar and is afraid that if he drops it to four for a dollar, the crowds will disappear. He works all day, every day, because his cost from using good ingredients makes it so that he can only hire two other employees.

There are small, beloved restaurants like Mr. Chen’s in every city in America, and a recent study found that 30 percent of the new small businesses started in the last 20 years were started by immigrants. The Open City article doesn’t try to give any ways out of Mr. Chen’s dilemma, but it’s a great read–go check it out.